


Crash at My Place (Baby, You're a Wreck)

by orphan_account



Series: Sunflower Sketches [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, M/M, One Shot, POV Tony Stark, Peter Parker is a Mess, Pining, Post-Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:01:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22233739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: After two days without any news from Peter, Tony visits his apartment to try and figure out what's going on. When he sees the way Peter has been living, he becomes determined to make a change for the better.
Relationships: Peter Parker/Tony Stark
Series: Sunflower Sketches [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1616491
Comments: 14
Kudos: 284





	Crash at My Place (Baby, You're a Wreck)

No matter what anybody says, Tony isn’t really an overbearing guy. Peter’s a big boy, and he’s got crazy mutant super powers, and he can take care of himself. Besides that, Tony doesn’t do clingy. Not in relationships, and not in friendships. He’s live and let live. He’s “You know where the door is.” He is chill personified.

All that being said, they do share a lab, and a patrol rotation, and a perhaps over-active text chain. So when he doesn’t see or hear from Peter for two whole days, he _notices._

Well, no. That’s a lie. He notices after 12 consecutive hours without Peter slumping into the lab with burritos and a plan to improve the padding in his spidey suit because Rhinos head-butts are packing more of a wallop than they used to, or texting Tony about the funniest Daily Bugle typos, or calling to ask if he knows how to get pasta sauce out of cotton. Seriously. Like Tony knows anything about laundry. (“ _I don’t know man, you’re Italian. Surely this is a common problem. Teach me the dark magicks of your people.”)_

After 12 hours Tony notices, and after 24 hours he paces the lab and goes though his texts with Peter. The last message Peter sent him was a snapshot of his paper coffee cup precariously balanced on the head of one of the Chrysler Building gargoyles, the majestic New York skyline picked out in pale pinks and oranges from the sunrise. The point of the photo isn’t the terrifying view – though, seriously, is he trying to give Tony a heart attack? – it’s the name scrawled in black ink across the side of the cup. Pater Porker, it reads. Peter had followed the picture up with a block of laughing until crying emojis. Then radio silence.

Still attempting to play it cool, Tony texts Peter a picture of the engine of his Maserati and asks “Wanna play?” Pete’s usually down for digging his fingers into an old engine, though Tony’s wary about letting him do so because of his talent for explosions. There’s no immediate reply, though. Tony growls in frustration, and tries to turn his concentration back to his work on the nanite programming for the bleeding edge armor. He makes no progress at all.

At 48 hours, Tony’s standing in the hall of Peter’s building staring at his door and urging himself to just walk away. Peter’s just taking some time for himself, probably. Nothing wrong with that. But there’s that tell-tale tingle along the back of his neck. Something that tells him maybe he isn’t worried for nothing.

It’s not exactly a secret that Peter’s been having a rough go of it, lately. His back injury, May’s illness, and then MJ leaving. It would be a lot for a person who didn’t already have the weight of the world on their shoulders. For Peter … Well, Tony’s just always a little worried that the next thing will be one thing too many.

Every time he sees Peter come into the lab with red-rimmed eyes, or favoring a fresh bruise from a fight Tony wants to pull him into a full-body hug. But that’s not the type of friends they are, right? They tease, and they snark, and they make crazy science together, but they don’t really talk about the serious stuff. At least not directly.

When May died, Tony had made up an engineering emergency. Something about an imminent alien attack, and he and Peter had spent a whole week in a fug of coding and welding and greasy take-out creating a global net to deflect projectiles from outside the atmosphere. After they cracked it, Peter had collapsed onto the ratty lab sofa, slept for 18 hours, and then got up and headed home. He never asked about the aliens after that, so Tony figures he knew the whole time it was a ruse.

After he and MJ signed the final divorce papers, Peter and Tony drank an entire bottle of Lagavulin on the floor of Tony’s living room, and Tony had recounted every embarrassing break-up story he could remember.

“I’m just not sure I’m cut out for this stuff, boss,” Peter had rasped at him when they were down to just a couple of amber fingers at the bottom of the bottle. “I’m a wreck, and maybe I’ll always be a wreck. You can’t be someone’s person, take care of them, if you can’t even do that for yourself, right? I don’t think I can be trusted to love someone right.”

 _My wreck._ The thought had invaded Tony’s mind unbidden. It had felt lie a bruise on his heart, something tender that he shouldn’t touch because all it caused was an ache. _You’re my wreck._

In Tony’s experience, good things are rarely neat and tidy. Mess is just the price you pay for the things worth having. Blood and sweat and dirt rolling down your back in a cave while you save your own life. Hot metal and burning flesh and smoke in the lab to create world-shifting technology. Grease and hot cheese rolling down your chin when you bite into the world’s most perfect cheeseburger. It’s all of a piece, in his mind.

In the moment, so drunk that every move felt like it was made through syrup, Tony had reached out and clasped the back of Peter’s neck, bringing their foreheads together. Their whiskey-tinged breaths had met and mingled, and Tony had studied the other man’s face – dark stubble shadowing his jaw, aquiline nose tipped pink from too much drink, brown eyes closed tight, his thin eyelids trembling.

“You’ve got a good heart, Pete,” Tony had whispered into the bare few inches between their faces. “And someday you’re gonna find someone who’s happy to take all the love you’ve got. Messy or not.”

Tony was never sure afterwards, though the haze of alcohol, if he had really seen a tear slide down Peter’s cheek, or if he imagined it. The other man had nodded a few times, rubbing his soft hair against Tony’s forehead, and they stayed like that for a long moment. Then Peter had let out a gentle rumble of a snore, and Tony had to bite back a laugh so as not to wake him before manhandling him onto the couch and pulling a blanket over him.

Now outside Peter’s door, Tony steels himself and knocks. He’s not going to make a nuisance of himself, but he needs to know his friend is ok. There’s no response, and he repeats the pattern twice over before reaching into his back pocket for the tiny toolkit he almost always carries.

Jimmying the lock is the work of a few minutes. Really, Peter should get better security, he’s thinking before the door swings open and he takes in the entirety of Peter’s apartment with one look.

Tony’s never been inside Peter’s place before. They always end up at the tower because the lab’s already there. Sure, he knew the man had downsized after the divorce, but he hadn’t expected anything like this.

It’s an efficiency studio. One room plus a bathroom. One tiny window looks out onto an alley with a grimy brick wall across the way. It also looks as though a tornado has swept through the space. Tony’s first thought is that it’s been ransacked, Peter kidnapped, but a closer examination only raises questions.

Cardboard boxes that look to contain most of Peter’s worldly possessions are tipped over on their side or overturned, clothes, books and trinkets spilling out onto the floor. An old box of a television with metal rabbit ears attached to the top is lying, cracked screen up, beside a suitcase that must have served as a TV stand before whatever happened happened. There’s a full-sized mattress on the floor with its sheets twisted into an odd swirl and nearby a lamp smashed to shards.

Tony taps at corner of the yellow-tinted aviator sunglasses he’s wearing.

“Hey J,” he says, surveying the mess. “Any idea what we’re looking at here? Burglary gone wrong, you think?”

The lenses of his glasses light up with scrolling data as his AI scans the room.

“My sensors indicated a great deal of latent energy, sir,” JARVIS replies.

“Yeah,” Tony says. “I was afraid it might be something hinkey.”

He steps forward into the room, feeling something squish under his loafers. Looking down, he finds he’s stepped directly into half a pizza, spilled from its box and now growing a thin layer of green mold. Tony grimaces, but at least it gives him a time frame for how long Pete’s been gone. One thing he knows is that Peter B, Parker isn’t the type to let good pizza go to waste.

Slowly, Tony explores the space, a clearer picture of what happened coming into focus as JARVIS collects more energy data. Tony, for his part, focuses on the smaller things that give him an idea of how Pete’s been living these past few months.

There’s a meticulously organized crime board on one wall – a map of Queens crisscrossed by red twine and studded with snapshots of some of Peter’s main adversaries and clipped newspaper stories that could be something or nothing. It’s full up, creeping out of the confines of the map because it’s so overloaded with information. So he knows where most of Peter’s energy is going.

It’s certainly not to cooking. While Tony finds a busted hot plate in the wreck, he also finds an inordinate number of empty take-out containers. Tony’s not in a position to truly judge anyone’s eating habits, but he’s a bit worried about the amount of MSG that Peter’s clearly consuming.

Despite the chaos of the room, it’s the radiator that remains miraculously untouched. Peter’s mismatched socks and his once white, now pink, underwear are still laid out to dry on the coils. The detail makes Tony’s chest twinge. It’s so intimate, this tiny piece of Peter’s domestic life. And it’s so very Peter, forgetting that he can’t put the suit in with his whites when he does a load of laundry.

The whole of it makes him want to wrap Peter up in a blanket and take him home to the tower. Tony aches to just take care of him.

But then he catches sight of himself in the crooked mirror on Peter’s wall – black hair shot through with gray strands, dark circles sunken under his eyes, a crinkle of crows’ feet in their corners. There are lines on his forehead, and his immaculately-trimmed beard is thinner than it used to be. It all reminds him that he shouldn’t be feeling the longing that courses through his veins, not just to care but to possess. That’s not a thing that Peter would want from him.

 _Tired old man,_ he says to himself, making a face at his reflection.

Tony is going to offer Peter a guest room, though. Once he figures out what’s happened to him, brings him back from wherever he’s gone. It’s the least he can do for a friend.

The whole rift pulling people through the multiverse thing doesn’t actually take him that long to figure out, considering that yesterday Tony didn’t know that the multiverse was a real thing. It takes longer to figure out a method of pulling Peter specifically back. Tony doesn’t leave the apartment or sleep really for the three days it takes to build the necessary device. In theory it’ll work a little like a DNA magnet, pulling Peter back into the proper place. The man’s DNA, luckily, is easy to come by. Seriously, thoughts of that bathroom make Tony shudder.

He has Happy deliver the necessary equipment. All of Tony’s energy is focused on building the magnet. He and JARVIS agree that the effect of Peter remaining too long in a universe not his own will be entropic. His system won’t be able to stand it for too long. Tony has to hurry.

He’s maybe half a day away from having everything ready when the wrench in his hand is suddenly pulled out of it, and a sucking force like a whirlpool without the water fills the room, pulling the air from Tony’s lungs and dropping him to his knees. The machine he worked so hard to build goes careening into a wall, and papers flutter around Tony’s head like a flock of angry birds.

Then as quickly as it started, the chaotic force dissipates. The rumble that filled Tony’s ears is replaced by quiet and then the crack and thud of a body hitting the ground.

“Ow,” a very familiar voice groans. “Fucking ow. I really need to get better at sticking the dismount.”

Tony’s on his feet in an instant, staring down at Peter, who’s landed back-first on the floor, and is hesitantly rolling up to a sitting position, assessing his injuries.

His hair is a tangled mess, he’s got a gash across his nose, and he’s wearing sweatpants instead of the bottoms of his spidey suit. He’s the best thing Tony’s seen in ages.

“Five. Days,” Tony grinds out through clenched teeth, because he was so worried. So fucking worried, and now Peter’s grumbling over a tear in the neck of his suit. “You have been gone for five days Peter Benjamin Parker. Where the fuck have you been?”

“Boss?” Peter’s eyes go wide when they land on Tony. “What are you … Never mind. This is great. You’re here. There’s a multiverse! I swear. It’s not just a comic book thing. Oh my God. And I was in a different world, and there was another me, but he was dead. And Fisk was behind it all. And we had to use a goober to –”

“Don’t call it a goober,” Tony winces. Peter’s such a nerd. He loves it.

Without Tony really giving them permission, his feet lead him closer and closer to where Peter’s standing.

“Dohickey,” Peter allows with a shrug. “Whatever. Tony, are you grasping the magnitude of what I’m saying here? Because it changes everything we thought we knew about the world, and …”

Peter’s rambling fades away as Tony pulls him into a hug, clasping their bodies close together. Peter’s soft gut presses into Tony’s stomach. It’s a tiny spot of vulnerability in his otherwise super-enhanced body, and it almost steals Tony’s breath away. He’s an inch or so shorter than Peter, the perfect height to bury his nose in the crook of the other man’s neck and breath him in – ozone and sweat.

“Oh,” Peter breathes out in a huff. “This is nice.”

Tony slowly peels his face back from Peter’s neck to look up into his eyes.

“Hey,” Pete says, giving him a crooked smile. “You doing ok? Hanging in there?”

“Next time you get sucked into an alternate reality,” Tony says. “You text me first. I worry.”

It has to be the relief coursing like a drug through his system that makes Tony do it. All he knows is that one second he’s looking up into Peter’s warm brown eyes and watching a laugh light up his face, and the next he’s pressing their mouths together.

Peter’s lips are firm and pliable. He’s very still for an excruciating moment, and then he lets out a little gasp. Tony tastes the wet heat of his breath and flicks his tongue inside for just an instant, pulling back to tease the edge of Peter’s plump top lip.

He presses a final chaste kiss to the corner of Peter’s mouth before pulling away to look into his face. Tony’s bravery recedes a little, and his stomach flips as he watches a wash of emotions flow across that expressive face.

It’s Peter’s eyes that give him a bit of hope. The pupils are blown wide, and they look glassy and dazed.

“I don’t want to alarm you, boss,” Peter says slowly. “But I think I might have ended up in the wrong reality. That’s uh …”

He pauses, licks his lips assessingly.

“That’s not a thing we do where I come from. Not that I’m complaining. You, um. You really know what you’re doing. Just. You probably want the right Peter, yeah?”

Well. It’s not exactly the reaction Tony was hoping for, but it’s not an outright rejection either. It’s something to work with. And with Peter back and temporarily out of danger, Tony feels up to the challenge.

“Pete, trust me when I say that you’re right where you should be,” he says, giving Peter’s hips a gentle squeeze. “Just not in this apartment. This is an insult to living spaces.”

At that, Peter laughs and pulls Tony more firmly into a hug. His breath ruffles Tony’s hair.

“Jesus, I know boss,” he says. “I already told you I’m a wreck, didn’t I?”

 _My wreck,_ Tony thinks, but doesn’t say. He can’t say it yet. It isn’t true yet. But if he has his way, it will be.

**Author's Note:**

> I just love Peter B. Parker, human dumpster fire, very much. I've wanted to write something with him and Tony together for a while, so this is a snippet of something that I might expand at some point. The universe here is a mix of Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, MCU and the comics. I basically took what I liked and shoved it into a story, so I hope it makes sense.


End file.
